Little Man

This evocative drawing exemplifies George Grosz’s interest in creating symbolic self-portraits. Here we see Grosz himself seated at a table, with a cityscape behind him and a “little man” before him. During World War I, he often inserted such figures into paintings, drawings, and prints as a means of self-parody and social commentary. In fact, one scholar has suggested that here the “little man” represents the artist in mannequin form and that therefore the work is a double self-portrait.